Scholarship / I'd love to hear your thoughts on this leadership essay for the Chevening Scholarship Application [4]

Hello! I´m applying for the Chevening graduate scholarship program and would love to hear your thoughts on this leadership essay I wrote for the application.

Leadership Essay for Chevening Scholarship Application

During my second year in law school, I became enamoured with the idea of creating a platform that could connect event organizers with potential customers. Law was and still is a great passion, however, the idea of being able to create a product from scratch that could have an impact on society - with a large amount of consumers -, was extremely appealing.

Since a child, I've been told that one of my greatest skills is the art of persuasion. By working on the aforementioned project and creating my own business, there was the opportunity to use this skill on a macro-scale. For this, I started studying about startups and the mechanics of starting a business. One of the most constant and important advices, was to look for a technical co-founder when it came to starting an internet business. Therefore, I had identified my first challenge: convincing one or more programmers to join me.

I started looking for references and met with a lot of people, but one person really caught my attention. More than the great references of him, our conversations leaded me to believe he was a smart, humble and calmed professional. Long story short, he agreed on being my CTO. At the time, I was 21, he was 31 and engaged.

We raised funds from family and friends and started working on fully developing the idea. I had hired a local company in order to create sketches of the product, but once my technical co-founder came onboard, we embarked on creating our own team; lowering costs and putting dedicated and passionate people to work.

We spent almost a year creating the first version of the product. In the process, we interviewed more than 50+ potential employees, pitched the idea in front of investors and advisors, incorporated the company in the USA and the Dominican Republic, registered trademarks in both countries, negotiated with payment processing companies, among many other things.

By the time we launched the product, we were a team of 6, with me holding the difficult task of being the chief executive officer. I was responsible of creating and communicating the vision, motivating the team, managing conflict between employees, networking with local and external investors and advisors, hiring and firing, etcetera.

Some hard working and stressful months went by and we gained more than 500+ customers. However, it wasn´t enough and we couldn´t convince investors to join in. Eventually, we ran out of money and were obligated to dissolve the company. I may not have triumphed on creating the great product expected, but what I learned about leadership in the process has no price. It was an alternative yet great education root.

I learned that the most important traits of a leader are the ability to be calmed in tough situations, to be sure of your convictions but nevertheless open to change; to be fair with the people that surround you and to think thoroughly before making decisions. People that follow you need to be sure that you're confident in what you're doing because that makes them feel safe; and to feel confident with yourself: hard work, emotional stability and good preparation are prerequisites.